2011

Erwin Panofsky’s rediscovered Habilitation thesis will be published by De Gruyter in 2014

January 14, 2013

The previously missing manuscript may well be regarded as a milestone in the academic history of the field of art history.

Erwin Panofsky’s Habilitation thesis, which was previously believed lost and was discovered quite by surprise in June 2012 at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich, will be published by De Gruyter in 2014. The work, titled Die Gestaltungsprincipien Michelangelos, besonders in ihrem Verhältnis zu denen Raffaels, was never published, and may well be regarded as a milestone in the academic history of the field of art history.

The epochal work is to be edited by Gerda Panofsky. De Gruyter will be publishing it accompanied by Gerda Panofsky’s own biography about her late husband’s early life, school, and student years, along with his conceptual sketches from the years 1915–17 that have been preserved in manuscript form. “There were a number of renowned German publishers who expressed interest in bringing the Habilitation thesis to print,” says Gerda Panofsky, “but not least, I found it compelling to have this work published by the same press where Panofsky’s first doctoral dissertation originally appeared.”

Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968) was one of the most significant and influential art historians of the 20th century. His Freiburg dissertation on Dürers Kunsttheorie, vornehmlich in ihrem Verhältnis zur Kunsttheorie der Italiener (1914) was published in 1915 by the Georg Reimer Verlag, one of De Gruyter’s founding publishing houses. “In publishing Panofsky’s Habilitation thesis, the publishing house takes great pride in the opportunity to publish a second significant work by this influential scholar as part of its publication program in art history,” says Alexander Grossmann, Vice President of Publishing at De Gruyter. “We are certain that the academic world has been waiting expectantly to read and work with this book.”